Blanket Statements
by Faye Dartmouth
Summary: Michael discovers one of Billy's more unusual pastimes.


Title: Blanket Statements

Disclaimer: I do not own Chaos.

A/N: For lena7142. Who makes blanket forts and writes torture scenes like nobody's business. Oh, and this is crackish.

Summary: Michael discovers one of Billy's more unusual pastimes.

-o-

Billy was late.

This wasn't unusual. This was Billy after all. Timeliness was next to cleanliness on Billy's list of priorities and neither ranked particularly high.

Or at all.

Still, after five minutes of waiting, ten minutes of honking, and fifteen minutes of trying Billy's cell, Michael dragged himself out of his car and rapped on the door.

"Billy!" he yelled.

There was a muffled thud. "Just a second!"

"You've had a second!" Michael yelled back. He glanced at his watch. They were due at work ten minutes ago. "You've had too many seconds."

There was rustling and grumbling, both of which were cut off abruptly by a resounding thump that reverberated through the door.

Michael frowned. "Billy? What are you doing in there?"

"Just trying to find my way out of this…"

Michael's frowned deepened. Secrecy came with the job, and Billy had more secrets than most. While Michael had no qualms with Billy keeping his MI6 days under wraps, he'd learned to be wary of secrecy regarding his personal habits. He only had to walk in on Billy playing guitar naked once to realize that sometimes ignorance wasn't bliss. "Out of what?"

"Nothing," Billy replied, far too quickly. "Nothing important, anyway. Just something of a project in my off hours that may or may not have gotten just a wee bit out of control."

Michael's frown etched so deeply, it almost hurt. "Billy, if you don't open this door—"

"Just a second!" Billy called, a tinge of desperate now.

Michael waited another beat. There was a boom and a yelp. "Okay, that's it," Michael said. "I'm coming in."

"No, wait—"

But Michael didn't listen. He turned the knob, finding the sweet spot he knew was there before poking the latch and jimmying it open.

The room was aflutter and the air billowed as everything deflated. Michael was on his guard, going for his gun, but the only thing he could see was a swath of blankets covering the floor.

In the middle was a lump. The lump was Billy-shaped.

After a moment, Billy popped free, his hair disheveled and his tie only half on.

Michael stared. "You want to explain this?" he asked, nodding at the mass of blankets covering the room. They were strung up over furniture, attached to the walls. One was somehow tied to a ceiling fan – a _moving_ ceiling fan.

"Ah," Billy said, looking up and around as though seeing the blanketed devastation for the first time. "I can see how this might look perplexing."

"Perplexing," Michael repeated. "It looks insane."

Billy smiled sheepishly. "Just a little exercise in survival skills."

"How could this help you survive anything?" Michael snorted. "Trying to put out a fire by smothering it? It looks like it smothered you."

"Hardly! It's improvisational building," Billy said with due finesse. "The art of creation with found objects and no guidelines by which to navigate." He examined the mess forlornly. "It looked much more impressive before you undid the key support that was attached to the door."

Michael blinked, sorting through the verbose Billy-speak. "You were making a blanket fort."

"It was an exercise in skill and creativity," Billy clarified. "Challenging the limitations of the coddled adult psyche."

"A blanket fort," Michael repeated.

Billy sighed. "The nights are rather long and lonely," he admitted. "And the tunnels remind me of the intricate box mazes we used to make in the basement of my mum's flat back home. Countless hours, exploring and building. It well prepared me for time alone undercover, with nothing but the veil of dark to discover and master." He paused, shrugging. "Plus, I refused maid service all week and kept asking for extra sheets. I needed to put them to some use."

Michael's frown returned. "You need new hobbies."

Billy looked apologetic. "I ran out of books."

Shaking his head, Michael rolled his eyes. "Be at the car in two minutes or I'm leaving without you."

Billy extricated himself, almost tripping as a blanket clung to his leg. "You're just jealous you didn't get to see it when it was up!"

Michael kept shaking his head and didn't look back.

(But he didn't deny it either.)


End file.
